German Miscellany

One of nineteen manuscripts whose colophons name Ivan Alexander, written across roughly half a century. Six of those were made to the tsar's own order; the rest, like this one, were made elsewhere and for other patrons, and mention him anyway.

That distinction is the point. A ruler named in books he did not pay for is a ruler whose name scribes reached for by habit — which is a different and better kind of evidence than a commissioned dedication.